Healthcare costs continue to rise, forcing insurers, including government-provided programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, to limit coverage, raise premiums or increase co-payments. Healthcare costs are greater than 15% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and are a major factor in the health of the economy as well as the health of the nation. Nearly half of those costs are covered by government programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid. In addition to the soaring cost, rising unemployment, with many losing health insurance while unemployed, as well as the rise of obesity of almost epidemic proportions has severely hampered the healthcare delivery system. There is clearly a demand for efficiently delivered healthcare that provides quality care needed to maintain the health of all segments of society.
Over one-third of healthcare costs come from administrative services. Within the conventional physician's office, there are non-medical staff members, such as receptionist, insurance specialists, administrative assistants, answering service and appointment clerks who are not directly involved with patient care. The staff often creates a gap between the patient and the physician, blocking channels of communication and delaying timely access to the healthcare system.
An additional source of costs in the healthcare system is the frequent use of emergency room (ER) in place of a primary care physician. Many ER patients present routine medical needs because they lack timely access to a healthcare provider, substituting the ER for an ongoing relationship with a physician. These routine needs tie up the ER, a facility designed for urgent and life-threatening situations, staffed by high-priced specialists and equipped with expensive high-tech instruments, create unimaginable waste in the system.
The medical establishment has slowly adopted technology for managing patient medical histories that are accessible over a network. For example, Pollanz (U.S. Patent Application Publication 2006/0184524) discloses a secure and independent medical database system. Pritchett et al. (U.S. Patent Application Publication 2010/0205005) discloses a medical record management system on the Internet that also stores family medical history for access by physicians. Witherspoon (U.S. Patent Application Publication 2009/0271378) developed a system for identifying and contacting medical personnel and communicating via video relevant information for emergency treatment of a patient. Similarly, Dziubinski et al. (U.S. Patent Application Publication 2009/0171227) has disclosed a system of processing an ECG (electrocardiogram) signal and transmitting the signal over a network.
There have been other systems relating to patient treatment, such as patient reminder to follow a medicine dosage regimen, disclosed in Urban et al. (U.S. Patent Application Publication 2005/0182653). Pearce et al. (U.S. Patent Application Publications 2010/0250271, 2010/0287001) uses a network application for capturing and transmitting data, including real-time pulse rate and temperature data. All these systems rely on a method of securing transmitting data and making transactions over a secure network as disclosed in Shibuk (U.S. Patent Application Publication 2009/0132813.)
All of the above disclosures focus on capturing, storing and presenting data, but none facilitate communication between the physician and the patient. None eliminate non-medical personnel from impinging on the patient-physician relationship by being gatekeepers and intruders. None reduce the cost or increase the efficiency of healthcare delivery and in many cases, have the opposite effect on healthcare delivery and quality.
Accordingly, there is a need to address at least one of the above or other disadvantages.